Long-time collectors will remember how these cheap and cheerful gifts were mainly constricted of cardboard or plastic and inserted inside the comics. There were no bulky toys bagged with comics back then. The old style gifts were designed so the comics could still be displayed flat on a newsagent's counter.
Anyway, without any further ado, here are the links to my old posts on the subject. I hope you enjoy them...
4 comments:
nice articles an worth relinking to..
Either thought about information on some of the 'free gifts' you have done for your comics over the years? like the Cutout Combat Plane? ^_^
Ah that wasn't a free gift, Ryan. It was a cutout in the comic, not an extra. I have provided artwork for some free gifts for Toxic though, and there's info on those either on this blog or my other blog.
^_^ I still class stuff like that as free gifts but I did put it in '' marks ^_^ while it might not always count, I used to (and kinda still do) love it when Comics have something like a Board game centre spread, or 'cut out this page, stick it to card and make a model rocket' etc. like I said, might not class as free gifts but love that kinda thing ^_^ in fact, one of the kinda many children's books I still enjoy was a detective story which the solution was made as part of a jigsaw puzzle that you had to cut out and assemble to see the solution..
Unfortunately some publishers to abuse the term "free" these days as in "free poster" when they actually mean the middle pages of a comic can be pulled out. There's nothing free if the page count is exactly the same as it would be without the centrespread featuring a pin up.
A few years ago I bought some old Battle comics on eBay. "No free gifts" said the description, which was fair enough, but what they actually meant was the centre page "board game" had been removed, ruining the story that was on the reverse. I got a part-refund and bought replacements, but that, to me, is why we should only call them "free gifts" if they're a bonus item, not part of the usual page count.
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